Johnny Depp and Kevin Smith are teaming up with their daughters for the second movie in Smith's "True North Trilogy". But what do we know about it so far?

After a run of poorly received films that have dented Johnny Depp’s reputation as a box-office magnet, the Hollywood superstar must be keen to move onto pastures anew. For his newest venture, Depp has teamed up with cult filmmaker Kevin Smith in a high-concept action movie based around the exploits of a pair of teen yoga fanatics and their fight against evil spirits. Depp’s daughter Lily-Rose and Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn will take the lead roles whilst Depp will co-star in the curiously entitled project, Yoga Hosers.

In recent years, Depp's box-office status has tailed off after some poor performances.

Set in rural Canada, Smith has written the film and will direct it when it begins production. The story will follow the two girls as they battle a mysterious and ancient evil that threatens a planned party by rising from the underground, penetrating through a spiritual netherworld to usurp the two girl’s weekend plans to attend the coolest party in town. It will mark the second venture by Smith in a trilogy of films, nicknamed the “True North Trilogy” set in the vast and spacious Canadian countryside. The first, Tusk, is currently scheduled to do the rounds in the Autumnal film festival circuit and features largely the same cast as Yoga Hosers. Harley Quinn and Lily Rose also appear in Tusk in roles that are synonymous with Smith’s directorial oeuvre: convenience store clerks. For Yoga Hosers, however, the girl will take on much more pro-active roles.

Combining reality, improvisation and scripted scenes, this hybrid comedy aims for Borat/Bruno but only achieves Jackass/Dirty Sanchez status. It definitely has its moments, but simply isn't creative enough to be a classic.

After the death of Big Red (Howland), a legendary Texas sports mascot who later became a diminuitive pornstar, his son (Hapka) and widow (Powell) are told that, to get their money, they must stage a 30-day competition between midgets and mascots. So the two teams are assembled, and competing with on midget team is former child star Coleman, who one teammate calls the "Shaquille O'Neal of little people". With 30 events overseen by Big Red's assistant (Kotabe), the competition spirals increasingly out of control.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest film by Kevin Smith and, for better or for worse, it's the same movie the 38-year-old New Jersey native has been making for the last 14 years. That isn't to say there aren't changes. The setting is no longer his beloved hometown and the characters, though certainly of the same mindset, are not members of the director's View Askew universe. There is also the matter of Seth Rogen who constitutes, with the lone exception of Ben Affleck, the only bona fide movie star Smith has cast in a leading role to date. That being said, I'm sure Rogen would let out a chuckle at the thought of himself as any sort of star.

As with most of the filmmaker's oeuvre, all you need to know is in the title. Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends, living together and working crap jobs in Pittsburgh. They barely make rent and often substitute frivolous pleasures like sex toys and hockey skates in lieu of water and heat. It's at a high school reunion that they reconnect with Miri's high-school crush Bobby Long (Brandon Routh of Superman Returns) and his lover (Justin Long), both gay porn stars earning triple-digit incomes in Los Angeles. At a bar afterwards, Zack realizes that a similar career path would solve Miri's and his financial troubles.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's Project Greenlight, a reality program designed to give first-time film makers an unprecedented shot at their dream, won a few battles but ultimately lost its war.

Over the course of three seasons, Greenlight made mountains out of molehill-sized production problems for the benefit of its drama-craving audience. The program also took joy in vilifying bullish producer Chris Moore, a headstrong professional whose chief crime was trying to keep unfocused amateur film makers on track. Not surprisingly, the weekly episodes ended up being more entertaining than the theatrically released films.

Kevin Smith is a deceptively good filmmaker. Often criticized for a filmic paralysis that has seen his style advance very little from the amateurish and unpolished production of the original Clerks, he has maintained a very plain and unaffected style of storytelling that serves him and us very well. In Clerks II, the plainness of his production lends the film an effortlessness and reality that compounds the humor of Smith's script and underscores the banality of the world he captures. The film has a relaxed pitch-perfect tone that gently draws you in before bitch-slapping you in the face with some of the most acerbically constructed, sporadically gut-busting, brilliant, base, and repulsive splotches of hilarity cinema has produced and probably wouldn't dare repeat.The story is suitably minimalist. Former mini-mall clerks Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) now work at Mooby's fast food restaurant. Randal spends his days badgering the customers and perpetual employee of the month Elias (Trevor Fehrman), an uber-Christian uber-nerd with a penchant for Peter Jackson. Dante has slightly more to do. Just as he is about to make the move to Florida with fiancé Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach) and begin a life he has been threatening to live for twelve years, he finds himself vacillating between his affections for Emma and his Mooby's manager Becky (Rosario Dawson). The story's tensions are these: Will Dante choose the woman he really loves? Will Randal realize his life is slipping away? Will Smith really show cinemagoers the special talents of Kinky Kelly? Of course, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) come along for the ride.Clerks II is, aside from its charm and tone, a very funny movie. The conceit of an under patronized fast food hellhole allows Smith's characters time and space to simply riff on anything and everything they like. Entrenched in the culture of internet blogging and talkback, Smith has crafted some fine and ultra-current dialogue for these diatribes. A heated conversation between Randal, Elias, and a customer, in which the battle between Star Wars and Jackson's Rings trilogy is contested, seems lifted from the pages of any of a countless number of film forums but laced with Smith's trademark zing. Randal, half huffy footballer and half super geek, is particularly hilarious at tearing shreds off Jackson's films. By the time he has concluded with "Even the trees walk in those movies!" I was gasping for breath. Other mirthful moments involve the buggery of donkeys, the fundamentals of "ass-to-mouth," and Jay's wonderfully oddball take on Silence of the Lambs' penis-tucking Buffalo Bill.Clerks II is elevated by an unsentimental heart always pulsing just beneath the surface of its irreverent movements. Smith's plain style captures the banality of his characters' lives -- the dirty floors, the rusting signs, the human imperfections -- and his dialogue turns away occasionally from obsessions with the body to matters of the soul. The dilemma Dante faces is very real and treated with delicate pathos in the script, and O'Halloran is effective as the conflicted clerk. At first I found him unsatisfactory as a romantic lead, his Ricky Gervais appearance and too-gentle demeanor not quite adding up to what I suspect Ms. Dawson might look for in a man. However, as the film progresses this becomes entirely the point. He is the everyman with the same kind of hidden heart as Smith's film. Anderson as Randal, the crook to O'Halloran's straight man, gives another performance that, whilst showy, is always believable.Newcomers Dawson and Fehrman fit well into Kevin Smith's New Jersey universe. Dawson is the precise piece of radiance required to light up the dull landscape and Fehrman, while perhaps the least believable character, certainly attacks the stereotype he plays with gusto. Clerks II is a fine balance between vulgarity and humanity that skimps on neither. Smith and his team should revel broadly at creating this appealing vignette of Jersey life and we can revel in watching it.Now that's a happy meal.

Some people think he helped make independent movies relevant again. Others firmly believe that mentioning his name among the likes of Tarantino, Linklater, and Soderbergh is akin to sacrilege. Don't even ask those same people about his writing skills, which at times can make an Aaron Sorkin project look like a mime show.

Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith (writer/director of Clerks and Chasing Amy) is a terribly engaging guy and an unpretentious storyteller, qualities that are affirmed in An Evening With Kevin Smith, a two DVD set featuring highlights Smith's Q&A sessions at several colleges. Then again, what kind of attitude what you expect a guy who dresses like he's about to mow your lawn?

The clown business has always been ripe with humor potential. Why, consider the mastery behind such films as Quick Change, Problem Child, Death to Smoochy, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space -- all of which rely on clown humor. Vulgar kicks it up a notch from these "classics," by giving us a kiddie clown by the name of Flappy who decides he can make extra money by dressing up in his clown makeup and women's clothing and appearing as gag entertainment at bachelor parties.

On his very first assignment, "Vulgar," as he goes by after hours, finds himself beaten and gang raped by a group of horny guys. Oops. No sooner has Vulgar/Flappy recovered than he saves a young girl from her murderous father, lands on the talk show circuit, and soon is offered his own kids' TV show. Soon enough, the hillbilly types catch up with him and attempt to blackmail him for the inevitable videotape of the night. Pulp Fiction-style revenge ensues.

Hey everybody, wanna watch a movie in which a guy dressed as a children's party clown gets violently gang-raped? I didn't think so. But here's the bigger question: Why would Kevin Smith protégé Bryan Johnson want to write and direct such a movie?

"Vulgar" is a product of View Askew, the production company that makes all Smith's joyously juvenile and sometimes insightful comedies, like "Clerks," "Chasing Amy,""Dogma" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." Johnson is a friend of Smith's and a frequent bit player in his movies (fans know him as Steve-Dave Pulasti). To watch his debut as a writer-director is to get the distinct impression that Smith owed him a favor.

Brian O'Halloran (the convenience store clerk from "Clerks," et al) stars in this unpleasantly dark comedy-drama as a down-on-his-luck professional clown who hits on the idea of jumping out of cakes in full Bozo regalia at bachelor parties as a joke before the "real" entertainment arrives. His first gig at a run-down motel goes badly -- he's sexually assaulted by a violent middle-aged drunk (Jerry Lewkowitz) and his halfwit hillbilly sons (Ethan Suplee and Matthew Maher).

Thanks to all the is-it-or-isn't-it-blasphemy controversy surrounding "Dogma," writer-director Kevin Smith has added a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer to the opening of this renegade ribbing of the Catholic church that is so amusing ("...God has a sense of humor, just look at the platypus") it will have audiences in stitches even before the first line of dialogue.

Whether or not you'll think the movie stays this funny will depend on how sensitive you are about your position on the religious yardstick, your threshold for soapbox pontification and what it takes to gross you out.

Smith, the maverick Generation X satirist responsible for ragtag underground hits "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy," makes no bones about testing the limits of irreverence and good taste in this ironically snappy and smart-mouthed theological deliberation.